


I Don't Want to Die

by AGDoren



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-30
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-09-20 23:34:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9521003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AGDoren/pseuds/AGDoren
Summary: Iris struggles to come to grips with her emotions after Barry tells her her fate.





	

He had thought for a moment that maybe it wouldn't be so bad. Iris had insisted that things be normal, that she didn't want to waste time with anger or recriminations. It had hurt Barry to hear her say that. To talk as if she believed she only had a few months left to live and needed to strive to make the most of it. But he was used to hurting. So he swallowed it down even though it cut his throat and tore at his gut like shards of glass. Iris was the one in danger. She needed him to make her feel safe right now and happy if she could. If normal was what she wanted then normal was what she would get.

They'd gone home to their apartment. Made love --she'd been the most passionate she'd ever been in their lovemaking-- and she'd slept. Since waking from his coma he'd rarely slept more than three hours at a time. He'd worried at first, but when there was no negative affect he'd concluded the speedster brain must cycle through sleep stages faster too.

To wake and find her side of the bed cold, had worried him.

He'd found her in her office, door shut and locked. That had been hours ago and as near as he could tell she hadn't come out since.

Barry swallowed and knocked on the door gently as if that would some how make the knock less intrusive.

"Hey, I'm leaving for work. Are you going to CCPN today?"

"No I had some time off. I'm using it."

"Ok."

"Go to work. I'm fine."

He didn't move. He stood in the hall shifting his weight from side-to-side trying to figure out something to say or do.The silence sat on him like a weight, gumming up his throat, sticking his feet. The urge to say something was so strong, but every thing he considered was quickly discarded. Nothing seemed right.

He started as the click of a lock turning broke the quiet like a startled flock of birds taking flight.

"Babe," Iris poked her head out the door. "I know we usually drive in together, but go to work." She flashed a smile and patted his chest."I'll be fine. I'm working on something here."

He wanted to peek around the door, see what she was doing. He wanted to ask what she was working on, but it clear she wasn't sharing.

"Alright," he gave the hand she'd patted his chest with a quick kiss.

"Go ahead."

Accepting that she wanted to be alone, Barry turned to go. He took three steps and thought, I should say ' _I love you.'_ But when he turned back the door was already shut and he could hear the lock clicking home.

* * *

 

_'Mythology tells us that you cannot change your fate. You try to and only bring it on faster. If an oracle at your birth predicts that you will murder your father and kill your mother, than so you shall. No matter how very much the idea of such an act fills you with horror and dread it will be done. Any attempts to avoid such a crime end with your father dead and your mother your wife and now the mother of your children as well._

_Religion tells us that suffering is unavoidable. There is a story, Buddhist perhaps, of a grieving mother who goes to the Buddha himself and ask for her child to be returned to life. The Buddha asks her for some mustard seed and tells her to find a home where none have grieved or suffered loss and ask for mustard seed. If she can bring him these seed her child will be restored. So she travels many months and perhaps years and everywhere she goes, every home she comes to the residents always have their own tales of suffering and grief. This goes on of course until she realizes that we all suffer the same losses and sorrows._

_Suffering is unavoidable and our fates cannot be dodged._

_So what of promises?_

_People don't like the concept of original sin and certainly the idea that humans are somehow born bad or making small children feel guilty for the crime of existence is absurd. But the idea that we are born imperfect, that we will always be that way and that we inevitably must fall short of our goals and desires is certainly an unavoidable truth. We will make promises and agreements and not keep them, we will fail our friends and loved one because we must because we're human and we can't not fail them. A Baha'i friend once told me we worship God in our imperfections._

_No matter how much we try sometimes we will do everything right and fail, because our human destiny is unavoidable._

Barry cannot save me.

Iris saved her work and slowly pulled her office door open. She'd heard Barry leave, but he could have come back.

She could practically picture Bear standing on the other side of her door, that confused hesitant look on his while his worried hands told the story of everything he was thinking. Confused, anxious, worried, she couldn't deal with that right now.

Iris went to the kitchen, started a fresh pot of coffee and put some bread in the toaster. She'd had a cup of one of those instant coffee drinks hours ago, but there was nothing like the rich, sharp smell of a fresh pot. She let the aroma of brewing coffee wash over her and tried not to think.

_The Five Stages of Grief_

Living people were selfish. She wasn't dead yet of course and there was a part of her that believed Barry and the others really could save her. They'd done so many impossible things before. But when she'd been looking for information about dying last night, almost everything had been for the misery of the ones left behind, not for those facing that final door. Even though  everyone was dying from the moment they were born.

She'd looked up the five stages of grief, because she'd heard somewhere that that was about the grief people suffered when they'd learned that they were dying soon. She hadn't found a single entry that addressed the dying. But then weren't most of the dying like her mother? Exhausted in a hospital too drained to read or write internet articles about the experience. How many people who'd suddenly gotten an expiration date were perfectly healthy people doomed by their stupid ass' boyfriends selfish actions?

Iris let out a low growl and buttered her toast. She really did not want to be mad at him. If Barry had known even imagined the consequences then he would never have changed time in the first place. And what kind of world was it that let a madman travel back in time to murder a woman in front her child and that could stand? What kind of world was it that that wrong could stand, but that Barry, her dear Barry who had only travelled back in time to prevent a wrong brought chaos?

How was it ok for Eobard Thawne to murder Nora Allen, but not ok for Barry to save her life?

She doesn't realize she is crying until the first tear splashes down onto the counter. One is two and three and then there are more and suddenly she doesn't want to be alone.

_She doesn't want to be mad at Barry._

_She doesn't want to be that needy, broken girl._

But she text him anyway.

**_Come home._ **

And he's there. Her Barry, her dear, dear Barry. And now she cries not the few tears that she'd let slip loose before pulling it together, before focusing on other things, because an expiration date was more than she wanted to think about.

She cries for her mother, for Eddie, for herself. For her father whose heart will break if she is murdered in four months. For Wally with whom she's not yet had enough time. And for all her friends. Caitlin, Cisco... Would she get to see Jesse again or her best friend from high school who had three kids?

For the world in which there is no place untouched by suffering and for the frail who humans doomed to failure Iris cried for them all.

And when she is all wrung out Iris looks up at Barry, her Barry, and sees that he has been crying too in quiet accompaniment.

She places gentle fingertips over his lips, because it needs to be said with no promises or declarations.

_"I don't want to die."_

 

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. King Oedipus is of course the unfortunate soul who murdered his father and married his mother even as he tried not to do so.  
> 2\. The mustard seed story is one of many stories about the Buddha, you guys should google it.  
> 3\. A Baha'i is a person who has accepted Baha'u'llah as the manifestation of God for this age.
> 
> So I wanted to write a little something that dealt with the different things that Iris might be feeling. I'm excited for the direction the show seems to be taking, but I also want to deal with some of the harder things she might struggle with. Leave me a comment and let me know what you think, love it or hate it let me know.


End file.
